<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'An odd day',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/21.jpg" alt="Two turkeys up in tree branches" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		I thought nothing more would happen yesterday, so I finalised my journal entry and committed it with the rest of the week&apos;s efforts to the repository.
		As I said yesterday though, even though I was tired, I still needed to stay up to make sure I didn&apos;t end up waking up early this morning.
		Interestingly, something struck me during my prayer after the commit.
		If Jesus blesses me by answering my prayer that the censorship be ended, I&apos;ll feel better and have more energy, so I&apos;ll have my coursework done early again like I used to.
		I won&apos;t be finishing my work at the last minute nearly every week like I do these days.
		Things will go back to how they should be.
		With that extra time an energy, why not give some of that back to the being that helped me out?
		So in my prayer, I promised that if the censorship is to end, I&apos;ll put some of that extra time toward my scripture study.
		I&apos;ll double down on my efforts.
		Instead of reading one chapter per week, I&apos;ll read two.
	</p>
	<p>
		Of course, I don&apos;t think the prayer will be answered; there&apos;s no evidence that Jesus is even real.
		However, he supposedly very much likes sacrifices of time, such as this.
		I&apos;ve also been told that praying with intent to act if the prayer is answered is good for getting prayers answered, so again, this should help if there&apos;s actually someone out there listening.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="logo">
	<h2>Website logo</h2>
	<p>
		This website has been sadly without a logo for as long as it&apos;s been up.
		Recently - I think it was just last week - I got a mock-up logo drawn, uploaded, and added to the homepage.
		It had some issues though.
		First, there were very specific mathematical proportions I wanted to use, but was unsure how to achieve them.
		Secondly, the image was in $a[PNG] format, and something scalable such as an $a[SVG] would really have been more appropriate.
		I had no idea how to work with $a[SVG]s though.
		I tried to figure out how to use inkscape a while back, but really didn&apos;t get anywhere.
	</p>
	<p>
		Today, I solved both problems and replaced the logo with a better one.
	</p>
	<p>
		It dawned on me that because $a[SVG] is an $a[XML]-based format, I should be able to draft a logo without using anythong more than a basic code editor.
		I started looking into how to build such images by hand, and found most of the information I needed.
		There are some weird quirks to the format I had to figure out through trial and error though.
		For example, if I couldn&apos;t use lines with an odd thickness without the lines blurring.
		With lines supposedly drawn from one pixel coordinate pair to another, odd thicknesses should have come out fine, while even thicknesses should have blurred, due to having half a pixel of colour hanging off on each side.
		Instead, I witnessed the reverse effect.
		My guess is that the coordinates you attempt to use aren&apos;t the coordinates that actually get used.
		Instead, there&apos;s a displacement of half a pixel.
		Next, Image boundaries seemed to be calculated automatically, but this automatic calculation was performed incorrectly if anything extended into the negatively-indexed quadrants of the plane.
		The <strong>*size*</strong> would be calculated correctly, but the cropping of the plane would be placed with (0, 0) in the upper left corner.
		This resulted both in the image getting cut off and a bunch of extra negative space showing up.
		This was easily fixed by performing further calculations as I worked and not centring my image about the origin.
		It was a bit harder, but I made it work.
		It seems there&apos;s a <code>viewBox</code> that could be used to set the boundaries correctly, though I was a bit afraid to touch it for some reason.
		This is the first $a[SVG] I&apos;ve ever built, so I wanted to let the computer figure out the sizing itself, thinking I&apos;d probably get better results that way.
		Due to the fact that I forgot to account for the fact that the bottom of the square I was working with was going to be empty, I was right.
		Because I didn&apos;t explicitly set the size of the image, the useless empty space got cut off once I removed the guide lines I&apos;d started with before adding anything to the actual logo.
	</p>
	<p>
		It was a bit of a pain to figure out the numbers, and I&apos;m not entirely sure I got them just right.
		My calculations always seemed to be off by a pixel or two due to my lack of understanding as to where the image was even centred around and where lines were to be drawn.
		If a line is four pixels thick and you set the centre to be at x equals five, where&apos;s the actual centre?
		The line blurs with an odd thickness but not an even one, so the centre is actually between pixels.
		So is it between four and five or between five and six?
		I don&apos;t even know.
		With trial and error, I was able to correct the positions enough that I couldn&apos;t visually tell if they&apos;re out of place.
		Some of them are probably perfect, while others are slightly off.
		That&apos;s fine.
		As long as it can&apos;t be seen.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, the logo&apos;s nothing fancy.
		It&apos;s just three geometric shapes centred about the same point.
		However, I miss having a logo.
		My old site had one, but that site was lost due to <a href="/en/weblog/2015/03-March/07.xhtml">my big data loss event</a>.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<h3>A business or service I&apos;d like to see come back</h3>
		<p>
			It&apos;s hard to think of a specific business or service I&apos;d like to see come back.
			I don&apos;t have any brand loyalty.
			I care about products and the way they&apos;re made, but when a company goes under, it&apos;s not like there aren&apos;t usually other companies to fill their role.
			I believe products should speak for themselves, and not be propped up based on what company produced them.
		</p>
		<p>
			I wouldn&apos;t mind seeing the local computer-recycling centre come back to my town.
			They didn&apos;t go away as in go out of business, but they did leave my city.
			I have to bike to the next city over to reach them.
			I usually don&apos;t have time for that, so I usually don&apos;t check out what they&apos;ve got.
			I have to either need something desperately or have an unusually-high amount of time on my hands to make it down there.
		</p>
		<p>
			I guess there&apos;s a couple specific products I&apos;ve missed for a while, but it&apos;d be pointless to wish them back at this point.
			For example, my favourite mobile device went out of production.
			When my last mobile broke down over a year ago, I simply didn&apos;t replace it, and went back to not being wired to the Internet at all times of the day.
			It&apos;s mostly been very nice, actually.
			Bet even if I wanted to attach myself to the Internet again, there are finally two better devices in the works.
			At least one of them&apos;s set to release next month, if I recall.
			And the other&apos;s set to release near the end of the year, I believe.
			My old device will pale in comparison, so I really have no reason to want those to go back into production.
			Even if they did, I&apos;d wait for a better device.
		</p>
		<h3>Favourite health tech</h3>
		<p>
			When we were asked what our favourite health tech was, I was a bit confused.
			Technology for health?
			I don&apos;t really need repertory help or anything like that, but I doubted the question was referring to that.
			My bicycle helps keep me healthy.
			Does it count as health tech?
			So I looked it up.
			It seems that health tech is the technology used to either monitor health outside a medical facility (for example, one of those wristbands you wear to track your motion and vital stats all day) or keep patients in touch with their care providers.
			For example, if you go to your doctor and get a radiograph, the radiograph machine and the monitor the radiograph is displayed on are both <strong>*not*</strong> health tech, despite being technology used in the healthcare industry.
			Instead, to be considered health tech, it needs to interface with the patient (either gathering data from the patient or providing data to the patient) <strong>*outside*</strong> a medical setting.
		</p>
		<p>
			Given that definition, I don&apos;t use health tech, so I can&apos;t pick a favourite.
			I&apos;ve never seen one of those wristbands that was compatible with a free software computer.
			They all require one of a certain two proprietary operating systems I can&apos;t safely and securely get my work done on, not to mention a proprietary application.
			I would never use something like that unless absolutely required to for some reason, such as for a school assignment.
			And to top it off, there&apos;s no way to view the data without sending it to the Internet.
			You can&apos;t view the statistics gathered without sending them to the company&apos;s server and having the company send the stats back to you, either through their proprietary application or over the Web.
			And that company isn&apos;t even your healthcare provider.
			It&apos;s a third-party company that has no business knowing how and what you&apos;re physically doing.
			Sending my vital stats and the full day&apos;s activity to some company for them to do what they will with is an incredibly creepy concept.
			The cost of knowing myself comes at the cost of allowing myself to be tracked and requiring me not to even be able to run an operating system on my machine that I can even get my other tasks done on.
			The cost is just too high.
		</p>
		<p>
			As for remotely accessing information from my doctor ...
			Neither the clinic where I got my recent surgery, the clinic where I&apos;ve got upcoming dietary classes scheduled at, nor my dentist provide any sort of remote access to health information.
			My primary care provider provides access via a Web interface, but that interface is a bit obtuse.
			The first time they had information for me, I couldn&apos;t find it in the Web interface, and put it down for a bit, planning to come back and try to figure out the interface later.
			Before I could get back to it, the same information arrived via post, even though I&apos;d signed up to use the Web interface instead to save paper.
			So with them sending the information anyway via post, I had no incentive to try to figure out the odd interface, and never went back to the site.
		</p>
		<p>
			I guess the website would be my favourite health tech if I absolutely had to choose something.
			But I only used it once and I didn&apos;t find it to be all that helpful.
			It was awesome though in that it didn&apos;t report my vital statistics to creepy third-party company.
			However, it&apos;s my favourite because it&apos;s the best of the bad options I&apos;ve seen, not because it&apos;s actually very good.
		</p>
		<h3>What career skills I&apos;d like to improve</h3>
		<p>
			This is a difficult question for me.
			The skills I&apos;d most like to use in a career are exactly the skills that&apos;d be difficult to find an ethical career using.
			I&apos;ll probably settle for a less-fulfilling career just so I don&apos;t have to do harm.
		</p>
		<p>
			If I could have my career my way, I&apos;d like to improve my $a[PHP] skills, learn Perl, and learn graphic design.
			These are things I&apos;d love to work with on a daily basis.
			I&apos;d love to be able to build computer games too.
			I might need to reach for C++ or Java for that though.
			I can&apos;t know enough about Perl to know how well it handles graphical stuff, and I know $a[PHP] can&apos;t handle it at the moment.
		</p>
		<p>
			With where I&apos;m probably going to need to head though, things related to system administration will probably be more helpful.
			If I&apos;m particularly unlucky, I may even need to learn to manage Windows-based systems and keep them functioning for other people.
			That&apos;ll be particularly difficult and obnoxious for me, seeing as I can&apos;t even keep Windows running well for myself.
			I&apos;d have to learn not only what hoops I&apos;d need to jump through to keep that system ticking, but also insist that the people using the systems I manage <strong>*also*</strong> do what needs to be done to not break the system.
			That doesn&apos;t sound fun at all.
			Hopefully, I&apos;ll instead get to work on the Linux side of things.
			Likely, that&apos;ll be more server-related stuff, but that&apos;s fine.
			I enjoy server work.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="ride">
	<h2>Bike ride</h2>
	<p>
		On my ride to tonight&apos;s $a[EUGLUG] meeting, I came across a turkey on the bike path.
		I tried to photograph it, but by the time I could get my camera ready, it had run, then flown away.
		It landed in a nearby tree, where I couldn&apos;t get nearly as good a shot of it.
		It had a buddy up there though!
		For some reason, there two turkeys hanging out beside a section of the bike path right next to the highway.
		I can only imagine that they were captive turkeys and escaped.
		I&apos;m not sure whether to be happy or sad for them.
		On the one hand, it&apos;s nice they&apos;re free now.
		The humans probably would have killed and eaten them.
		On the other hand, if they were raised in captivity, they may not be able to figure out how to survive on their own before they starve to death or some wild critter kills and eats them itself.
	</p>
	<p>
		As I drew near the meeting location, I approached one of those signs used to tell motor vehiclists how fast they&apos;re going.
		I thought it&apos;d be fun to see my speed, but I didn&apos;t think the mechanism would detect me.
		I&apos;d either be too slow, too small, or not in the right place to be detected as I was in the bike lane.
		It caught me though!
		I seems I travel at about ten miles per hour.
		(My country is obnoxious and uses its own system instead of the global standard, the metric system.)
		A converter online tells me that&apos;s about sixteen kilometres per hour.
		Nice!
		It by no means makes me a blur or anything, but it&apos;s a decent clip to move at.
		I&apos;m not sure it caught my speed correctly though.
		The trip to the meeting is only thirteen kilometres, and it takes me a bit over an hour to reach it.
		Then again, maybe it&apos;s the mapping software that&apos;s wrong.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I left the meeting, I found my tire was flat.
		Again.
		Why do I keep getting all these flat tires recently!?
		Everyone had left aside from the person whose home we meet at.
		I considered walking home, but instead rang the doorbell to ask to borrow their bike pump.
		It wouldn&apos;t cause too much hassle; they had to still be awake.
		And I knew they had one, as they tend to bike as their main method of commute.
		I think they do it for health reasons, though their car is electric, so maybe they do it for environmental reasons.
		I don&apos;t know.
		Either way, they had to have a bike pump.
	</p>
	<p>
		It turns out the doorbell woke their children though.
		They frustratedly told me not to ring the doorbell, though I highly doubt they&apos;d&apos;ve heard me if I knocked.
		I guess next time I&apos;ll just walk home.
		Thirteen kilometres.
		Ugh.
		I do need to start bringing my bike pump when I take trips to Eugene though, I guess.
		This is the third tire that&apos;s gone flat on me in under two weeks.
		Under one week, possibly, but I don&apos;t think so.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve been using a poorly-constructed bike light when I ride home from these meetings, recently.
		It was attached to the blue bike I received not long ago, and I moved it to the more-usable green bike.
		It&apos;s not great, but it mostly works.
		Tonight, the light suddenly came off it&apos;s clip though, hit the pavement, and completely fell apart.
		I was able to find the main components easily enough, the the main light bulb was missing.
		Being dark, it was pretty difficult to find.
		After a bit, I instead found a dropped mobile.
		The screen was badly cracked.
		I picked it up, hoping to find a way to return it to its owner later.
		Finally, after more searching, I located the bulb so I could move on.
	</p>
	<p>
		I contemplated how to get ahold of the device&apos;s owner, and kept messing with the device to look for clues.
		The owner had made the mistake of not screen-locking the thing.
		I could see contact information for the owner&apos;s friends, and contemplated messaging the owner&apos;s mother.
		She&apos;d know how to get ahold of the owner.
		Probably.
		Then I noticed the email application.
		That&apos;s it!
		I&apos;d open that long enough to look up the owner&apos;s email address, then I&apos;d be able to contact them directly.
		It turns out they didn&apos;t have email set up.
		However, the device was an Android, the email application I&apos;d clicked out turned out to be a Google Email application, and the owner had made a second mistake: adding a Google account to the device.
		Though the device was not configured to use email, I could still see the owner&apos;s email address.
		Hopefully they actually use that email account.
		Or maybe hopefully they don&apos;t, because using that account would mean they&apos;re using Google services even more.
		I wasn&apos;t able to email them tonight, as later events prevented me from even making it <strong>*home*</strong> tonight, but I&apos;ll email them tomorrow.
		If they don&apos;t respond in about a week and they haven&apos;t cut off service to the thing, I&apos;ll try messaging their mother as originally contemplated.
		If service is disconnected, I&apos;ll borrow the telephone at work or something and call their own number, which&apos;ll likely be attacked to a new device.
		If they check their email though, they can get the device back faster.
	</p>
	<p>
		The flat tire and the search for my headlight slowed me down considerably.
		Trying to figure out what to do about the mobile I&apos;d found slowed me down even more.
		Once I had a plan, I sped off, hoping to get home and get the email sent before midnight.
		That didn&apos;t happen.
	</p>
	<p>
		Instead, I me Larissa.
		She was a woman that seemed rather upset and was accompanied by two dogs, one on a leash and one that kept darting everywhere because it wasn&apos;t.
		It seems she was being pursued by her abusive boyfriend.
		She asked me to walk with her, as her boyfriend would leave us alone as long as there were two of us.
		In other words, he&apos;s a coward, and would only mess with her if she was alone.
		So we walked, as she telephoned her friend, trying to explain where we were so they could come pick her up.
		The boyfriend showed up, and told her to get her things out of his home tonight.
		I guess he was throwing her out.
		She agreed to do that (what else could she do?), but with me there, he didn&apos;t even leave his vehicle.
		I asked her if it was even safe to get her stuff, and she said it wasn&apos;t really.
		Hopefully if she does go for it, she brings her friend along.
		After walking some more, her friend finally found us.
		By then though, my tire was long since flat.
		I biked around a corner to make it look like I was fine so they wouldn&apos;t try to help me, but then got off and walked again.
		By this point, it was just about midnight.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
